The Very Busy Week

Tuesday evening I travelled down to Durham with friends to see Methera, an amazing folk string quartet. They were stunning. It was a lovely concert with beautiful sensitive playing and a range of traditional English and Swedish, and newly composed tunes. It was very inspiring.
Wednesday I travelled to Arwinton, about an hour and a quarter north-west of Newcastle, for a concert with the Stage 1 folk degree students. I've been singing in their vocal group all year (the same group I sang with at my concert in November). I also played in their large ensemble. It was a successful, well-attended concert in a lovely old church. The vicar (?) was very welcoming and supplied loads of sandwiches and cakes. Oh how English! :)
Thursday night I had a rehearsal of the film music I played in February because
Friday night we recorded aforementioned film music. It was a 4 hour session (which went well), but when I arrived home at 11pm I decided that hunger over-ruled tiredness and baked some biscuits! Cashew butter biscuits, just slightly gooey. Yum!
Then Saturday I trained it back to Durham for a day of seminars on music and meaning. They were mostly interesting, but the highlight may have been eating my packed lunch on the lawn of the Cathedral. The music department of Durham University is right next door to the Cathedral. And Spring has finally arrived!!!! It was lovely, although even after 5 rain-free days the ground was still damp. And we I got back to Newcastle I ran into Maeva and Luke on the lawn outside the campus theatre and joined them for a drink. You've got to love long evenings.
It seems that now it's a bit warmer everyone flops onto any patch of (damp) grass in the sun. Although, because of the numbers of people here, your personal patch tends to be quite small. (I never realised just how large an area my personal space was...)
AND the sun is quite special. After months of hideousness, it's hot (oh no - I'm turning English! I think 20 degrees is hot!) and light and there are gorgeous flowers everywhere. I even saw a number of sunburnt people on Saturday. I, on the other hand, look decidedly faded. I realised that I've had 12 months of winter!!!
On Sunday, Bridget's parents came to Newcastle to have lunch with me. They were travelling from Scotland to London. It was really great to see them and catch up on the news. Kinda nice to have someone's mum around on Mother's Day too, particularly as it wasn't Mother's Day here.